


call me the one

by themoongirl



Series: paint me in trust [1]
Category: WTFock | Skam (Belgium)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Vampire, M/M, Soulmates, Suicidal Thoughts, Vampires, first chapter will be posted tomorrow (sunday) !, this is a teaser for my new fic called 'paint me in trust'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:29:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24218161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themoongirl/pseuds/themoongirl
Summary: Sander Driesen spent way too many hours of his existence thinking about death.Death was not a black cloak with scary eyes walking around holding a scythe. Death was a possibility. When and where, the why being obvious. Death was a choice. Something to fall back on. Death was someone to shake hands with.And when he finally attempted to make that choice, to grab hold of that hand, even that found a way to backfire.Sander Driesen woke up a vampire in 1972.Now death was hardly a choice or a possibility. The odds of dying at his own hand decreased by tenfold.
Relationships: Sander Driesen/Robbe IJzermans
Series: paint me in trust [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1748029
Comments: 9
Kudos: 117





	call me the one

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warnings for: suicidal thoughts and implied past suicide attempt!

Sander Driesen spent way too many hours of his existence thinking about death.

Death was not a black cloak with scary eyes walking around holding a scythe. Death was a possibility. When and where, the why being obvious. Death was a choice. Something to fall back on. Death was someone to shake hands with.

And when he finally attempted to make that choice, to grab hold of that hand, even that found a way to backfire. 

Sander Driesen woke up a vampire in 1972.

Now death was hardly a choice or a possibility. The odds of dying at his own hand decreased by tenfold. 

Now, 48 years later, things were quite different. But he still found himself thinking about death. Death now took the form of an invisible smoky blackness stretching around his neck and threatening to squeeze. It was a long forgotten dream that lingered in the form of flashes of sadness. A longing for something. A debilitating punch to his chest that had him bedridden for weeks at a time. 

Sander had never been one for school pre-death. But upon falling into some unhealthy habits once he was handed far too much time on his hands, he was in desperate need of a distraction. He had now lost track of how many first college semesters he had endured. 

It had been another rough night. Sander found himself immersed in a painting of a boy standing alone on a cliff, the water below him black as night, the wind blowing his brown locks aggressively across his face. The boy was sad but he had a valorous look on his face. Sander wasn’t quite sure where the inspiration for this came from, only that when he started painting he wasn’t able to stop. He had completely forgotten that Noor, a close friend of his, was stopping by his apartment to have coffee and she found Sander up to his knees in paint in his homemade art studio. 

Noor leaned against the doorway with crossed arms, her raised eyebrows disappearing behind her baby bangs. “I’ve been stood up.”

“Shit,” Sander abruptly stumbled back, accidentally stepping into the cup of brushes stationed behind him. “I’m coming, I didn’t forget.”

The blunt cut of her hair bobbed with her as she nodded. “Mhm, sure.”

Sander brushed past her as he headed to his bedroom to change. He was throwing a clean black shirt over his head when he heard her calling from the other room.

“I have a new idea!”

Sander froze. That tone was familiar. Noor had known Sander long enough to see right through him, to read when he needed more than coffee as a fix for a rather rotten night. And she _had_ walked in on him stress-painting. Sander ran a hand through his white hair as he found her standing in the living room with a smirk on her face. He grabbed his leather jacket and swung it over his shoulders. He knew better than to question an idea of Noor’s, but he did anyway. “Should I be scared?”

Noor opened the front door and waved him out. “Always.”

On this particular day, it was rather warm. Warm enough to go swimming. Cliff diving was the more intense version of that. Sander hadn’t mentioned the boy on the cliff. Noor hadn’t even glanced at the painting. Yet she dragged Sander cliff diving that day anyway.

It also happened to be the beginning of it all.

Viscous waves crashed against the sandy shore and despite the high temperatures, nothing could fight against the salty winds. Sander and Noor left the car behind to make their way over to the stony path when they caught sight of a group of boys already at the very top of the steep rocks. 

It was a little out of the ordinary. The top of the cliffs were a rare place for any mortal to jump from. It was possible to do without dying, of course, but most humans wouldn’t take that chance. Except these boys it seemed.

Sander and Noor stopped at the bottom, craning their heads to look up at the group of guys conversing. “Idiots,” Noor said, crossing her arms and eyeing them.

Sander didn’t think there was anything about them that particularly stood out until his eyes settled on the boy in the middle, closest to the edge and curls whipping around in the sea’s wind. There was a magnetism there that threatened to choke him. Sander watched as the boy’s friends poked and prodded but ultimately backed away, leaving the boy to shrug off concerned gestures in favour of gazing down at the water below him. 

He stepped back in preparation to make the jump.

Everything froze as Sander saw the same picture he’d been painting the previous night.

And then the boy was falling.

Sander’s eyes were glued to him, his hair flying above him, his arms pushed above his head by the force of the wind. Sander couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t hear. There was a strange gnawing at his throat that stemmed down to his chest and was pulling in the direction of the boy falling into the water. It was as if there was a rope around Sander’s neck and it was tethering Sander to him. It was gradually getting shorter. It was almost painful, the tugging. Sander imagined the smoky darkness being replaced with the rope, a new sentiment threatening to squeeze. The rope wasn’t black, though. The rope was a brilliant gold. 

Noor nudged Sander to begin their trek to the top, making their way through poky pine trees and following the footsteps that the group of cliff jumpers had left for them. Sander didn’t know how to voice what he was feeling, fairly certain he’d sound halfway to insane if he tried. For one, where did the inspiration for his painting come from last night? How had he known? Sander tended to romanticize things as a means to love life once he realized he would be here for a while. Sander was the type to overthink a flippant gaze or wonder if the brush of a stranger’s hand meant something more. Sunrises never got old and the morning newspaper with a cup of coffee was his favourite time of day. He painted murals to cope with the passing of time and read books to feel less alone. 

In simpler terms, Sander knew himself and he knew himself well. He thought about this all the way to the top of the cliffs. It may have been only minutes but Sander needed to see him again. He needed to _know._

By the time Sander and Noor were at the top, the rest of the group had jumped, briefly lost to the waves below. Sander watched as the boys toweled off and trekked to the carpark, but his disappointment was short-lived when he noticed a brown head of hair hanging back to sit on the shores. Even from afar, he looked alone, with slumped shoulders and a still expression. Sander wanted to know if he was sad. Scratch that, Sander wanted to know _why_ he was sad and who had caused it. Maybe even how to make him unsad. But Sander, standing atop the rocks with his hands in his pockets, figured there was no real way to undo someone’s sadness. It was a lesson he had learned long ago.

No, he was definitely not overthinking this. There was no overthinking the feeling that the earth’s gravity had shifted to where the waves met the shore.

Noor was looking between Sander and the brunette, her arms crossed. “Interesting.”

“Mm?” Sander asked distractedly, eyes still frozen on the shore.

“Nothing,” Noor was nodding at the water unphased when Sander gathered the strength to stop looking. “Guess I’ll go first.” She winked at him as she stepped back and took her running start, fully clothed, leaping into the water like some kind of olympic champion. Noor let out a scream as she fell, but Sander knew it was more for humour than an actual need to. Instead of looking at her, Sander whipped his head back over to the boy.

The boy’s eyes roamed from Noor in the water below, (“Come on Sander!” She yelled) and then above to Sander. Sander stared at him, and he stared right back. 

There was an urge to get closer, the distance too great even for Sander’s extraordinary vision. There were three questions circling his brain. _Who are you? Where did you come from?_

__

__

_And why the hell was I painting you last night?_

It was rather difficult for Sander to break eye contact but he was getting antsy. The boy’s gaze was a laser drilling a hole right through him. 

There was nothing left to do but jump.

So he did, the air smacking him in the face but he hardly felt a thing. It was strange. Upon becoming a vampire Sander had lost the ability to _feel_ when it came to these kinds of once-exhilarating activities. But he felt the boy’s eyes on him the entire way down, and it was doing more for Sander than the fall itself. 

Sander broke through the water and hardly made a splash. Sander’s favourite part tended to be the moment when everything quieted under the surface, when reality was bewitched. But today, he hurried to get above the water again and wanted to immediately sink back below when he realized the boy was walking away.

The tug of an invisible tie was there again, and Sander now considered the fact that it may just be a noose.

\---

The second time Sander saw the boy was at the library on campus, much to his surprise. 

Sitting at a table by the back window of the library, there he was. He was sitting with his friend who Sander recognized from the cliff diving place. Dark brown hair, one earring, conventionally attractive, but Sander’s focus wasn’t on him. Sander’s attention was on the one sitting in front of him. Sander was able to see him clearer now and those honey brown eyes were demanding Sander’s full attention. They were moving back and forth on the laptop screen, and his focused expression was sending a comforting warmth straight to Sander’s core. Sander was standing in the historical fiction section of the library, but the titles in front of him started to fade into the background in favor of the returned weight around his neck. That damn rope. Sander needed to know if he was the only one who felt it.

Sander watched him lean back in his chair to stretch his own neck, drowning in a well-worn dark green hoodie, the strings frail and loose. 

And then the boy looked up and found Sander again.

And Sander almost fell over from the impact of it. He didn’t let it show apart from widening eyes and the sudden lack of movement in his chest as he stopped breathing. Sander just stared back.

Sander watched him quickly look down, and Sander didn’t miss how his cheeks and ears flushed red. Sander was in awe at the sight of it, the blood coursing under his skin and the vulnerability of it all. Not wanting to look like a literal creep, as his kind was historically accused of being, Sander tore his eyes away and looked back at the books. But he wasn’t reading the titles because he could physically feel the brown eyes watching him again. It was hard to explain. Vampires had increased senses but not on this level of certainty. Sander could feel him.

Sander smirked to himself and let his own green eyes flicker up to meet again. Only this time, there was no looking away. In fact, his head tilted curiously, brown curls falling against his forehead. Sander raised his eyebrows as if to say _oh, it’s you._

And Sander supposed it could be that simple. Maybe it was all in a person’s eyes. You go about your life, living day to day, looking up at the moon and wondering who might be looking at it too, and then you see them. Your eyes meet. And it’s suddenly very simple. _It’s you. Has it always been you?_

Sander yearned to talk to him, the rope tugging as if it was rather annoyed at coming so close yet so far. But if this was truly as important as it felt, Sander had to make sure the timing was right. Whether that be because of Sander’s general nerves or the fact that the boy was busy with his friend, Sander wasn’t sure. It might have just been that romantic in him. But it didn’t matter. This wasn’t the place. A library? All these people?

So Sander took his cue and went back the way he had come.

And good timing at that, because once in the hallway he was met with a flash of white hair similar to his, only hers was a couple inches longer and accompanied by bright red lipstick and gold hoop earrings. It was Zoe.

Zoe’s placed a hand on Sander’s arm as she navigated them both to the side of the hallway. She looked around. “Hey, did you see Yasmina in there?” She nodded towards the library.

Sander shrugged. He wouldn’t have known if the entire library was empty. His attention had been elsewhere. “Uh, not sure.”

Zoe hummed. “I’m going to go check. But listen, we’re all going to a party this weekend. You’re coming whether you like it or not.”

Sander raised his hands in surrender as he backed up to leave. “I’ll keep you on your toes.”

Zoe flipped him off with a crinkled nose and disappeared into the library. Sander sighed. Maybe getting drunk was exactly what he needed.

\---

It was interesting for Sander to see how college parties had changed over the years because they had morphed in every way while the foundation of them had stayed the exact same. For one, rock concerts no longer were ‘the place to be’ as they had once been in the seventies. And Sander could just not find it within himself to enjoy the direction that music had gone. It was probably his biggest problem with college parties today. The top forties playlists. But the thing that would never change about college parties was the reason everyone showed up. To get fucked up or to be fucked. The sixties were a wild time for that.

Only now people took far more pictures for Instagram.

The club was filled to the brim with students all on similar levels of _gone_. The worst part about a place like this for a vampire was the smell. With enhanced senses, Sander could smell it all. He could make out who was wearing what perfume and who had smoked what kind of cigarette. Weed was thrown in there, cologne, sweat, and it all conjoined together. Sander was standing against the back wall eyeing the students. People-watching was a favourite of his. The music would be almost overbearing if it weren’t for his ability to tune some of it out, but then Yasmina was sliding in front of him, voice loud in his ear.

“Please save me,” Yasmina grumbled. “Zoe is in a mood.”

Sander held his rum and coke tight to his chest. “What did you do?”

Yasmina scowled. “I did nothing. She won’t pay attention to my thrilling encounter with semester one biology.”

“Aw,” Sander teased with a tilted head and pouted lip. “Do you need someone to listen?”

Yasmina playfully shoved his shoulder but her face betrayed her. “If you insist.”

Yasmina didn’t need much to get what she wanted. She was the most intelligent person Sander had ever met and she didn’t try to hide it. She was fiercely loyal and her piercing scrutiny was enough to take anyone down. Her long, bushy curls were hanging behind her shoulders as she explained to Sander the class she was enthralled with, and Sander knew he would get torn apart if she caught him ignoring her, but he couldn’t help it.

Her voice faded to the background because Sander could feel a pressure around his neck again. And it didn’t take long for their eyes to meet. The boy was with his same group of obnoxious friends, standing around a table in the club with empty shot glasses knocked all over. He was wearing jeans and a faded grey t-shirt, his eyes droopy and hazy when they landed on Sander. 

Sander stared, and the boy stared back.

Just as he’d predicted, Yasmina snapped three consecutive times in his face, features curled in amusement more than annoyance. So, maybe not as he predicted.

“Stop looking at Robbe,” Yasmina crossed her arms. “It’s so obvious.”

Robbe.

“Robbe?” Sander asked, forcing his eyes back to Yasmina.

Yasmina studied Sander. With a curious expression on her face, she tilted her head. “Yes, Robbe. He’s actually in my biology class.”

“Oh,” Sander leaned his head back against the wall. “He’s cute.”

An annoyance rose in his own head, at the way he struggled to fully express himself, at the way this unknowable force constricted his throat. He wasn’t quite sure ‘cute’ could do this _Robbe_ justice. But then again, he wasn’t sure he knew of any words to do this _feeling_ justice.

Yasmina snorted, her eyes playful. “Let’s go say hi.”

Sander panicked. “No. Not now.”

“Okay, then when?” Yasmina had a smirk playing on her face. Sander knew she was enjoying this. “Next year?”

Sander couldn’t explain the nervousness building in his chest. What he could explain was his overthinking brain back at it again. On one hand, Sander was tipsy, Robbe seemed to be swaying on his feet, and it was crowded. Robbe was also with friends. And not that Sander was shy by any means, but what was he supposed to do? Walk up to him and introduce himself? In a pungent club with people bumping into his back and nowhere to have a decent first conversation? On the other hand, their staring game veered way past subtle at this point. But then just like the library, this didn’t feel like the place. 

After sorting through his jumbled thoughts, he pulled only a fraction of them out of his mouth. “He’s drunk,” Sander half explained. “I’m almost drunk. Not now.”

“You do understand how a hookup works right?” Yasmina didn’t need any sorting. “I know you do because I remember that phase of your’s back in the eighties. It may be gone, but I have not forgotten.” She raised her glass of water in a mock salute just as Sander snorted.

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Sander said and watched as Robbe took a sip of his beer, almost missing his mouth and spilling some down his chin. His cheeks flushed a pretty pink again. “Fuck, he’s so cute.”

Yasmina burst out laughing, throwing her head back. Sander shook his head and buried his hands in his leather jacket. Yasmina sighed when she was done laughing, taking a step back.

“I’m going to go say hi to him then,” She said. “With or without you.”

“Have fun,” Sander said as he pushed off of the wall.

With Yasmina gone Sander saw no reason to stick around.

He left the party early accompanied by an itch to paint something. And his thoughts kept on rolling. He couldn’t deny the spike of loneliness and slight regret, wondering if maybe he should have talked to Robbe tonight. Maybe he should have introduced himself, drunk or not. Maybe Robbe thought Sander wasn’t interested, maybe he went home with someone else. Maybe Robbe was just curious about Sander. Sander was literally made to draw people in, a known fact of vampirism. Maybe that was all this was. Maybe Sander was destined to be a hopeless romantic at heart and fall in love with strangers until the end of time. He wouldn’t be surprised. His brain made sure that nothing he ever did was simple.

Sander sat in his art studio, sitting on the window sill and avoiding the canvas in front of him. He imagined the rope around his neck stretching all the way across the city from Sander’s apartment to wherever Robbe was in the club. He imagined a world where he didn’t feel loneliness like a billion piercing knives to his heart.

Alas, there was only one thing he could do when he felt like this.

It wasn’t the alcohol in his system that was making the canvas in front of him hazy. Some of Sander’s best work came from when he was in crisis. He wouldn’t necessarily say that’s what was happening now, but the magic happened when everything disappeared. Sander’s mind wandered as he mapped out a blurry painting of Robbe’s face staring at him from across the club. Once he had an outline, he wandered to the kitchen to make coffee, filling his apartment in the familiar smell of coffee beans. He put David Bowie on the record player in the corner and nursed his hot mug in his hands as he returned to the window ledge, eyes pinned to the canvas. He stared a little too long at his collection of brown paint until he found one that did Robbe justice. His eyes were the only thing Sander managed to add colour to.

Around 1am, he jolted out of his daze, tucking his paintbrush between his teeth and digging his phone out of his pocket.

 **Yasmina:** he asked about u :) 

And then his body was flooding with a warmth he thought he’d forgotten, spiralling thoughts numbed to a quiet background noise and jittery hands finding their calm place at his canvas. The fact that he still had room for hope in his heart meant more than he cared to examine at the moment, but maybe, just maybe, it would turn out to be none of those things he thought he knew. 

\---

As it turned out, a little bit of hope can go a long way.

Leave it to Milan to throw the biggest party of the season. Sander would normally have rolled his eyes if it wasn’t for a certain phone call.

When Yasmina called Sander to drop the bomb that she had invited Robbe to Milan’s next showdown this weekend, Sander couldn’t find it within himself to be surprised she was playing wingwoman. In fact, he had been expecting it. And while Sander’s initial feeling of nerves crawled up his throat at the news, he quickly stifled it. Because yes, this was actually the perfect setting. Milan’s mansion meant that Sander could talk to Robbe without distraction. He could make a proper impression, in his own territory. With the absence of a thousand college kids and any threat of interruptions.

The residence was already overflowing as Sander made his way through the crowd. He shuffled past women in cocktail dresses, men with hoop earrings, clinking champagne glasses and a billion different rich perfumes. Sander just wanted to make it upstairs in one piece when cold hands were gripping his shoulder from behind. Sander spun around to see Milan with a goofy grin on his face. Dressed to impress.

“You better introduce me!” Milan called over the music as Sander continued walking, Milan following behind.

“To who?” Sander played dumb.

“Your boy,” Milan winked. “Don’t let him leave without meeting me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sander-” Milan whined.

But Sander didn’t stick around to answer as he finally made it to the stairs.

Sander made sure to have an already-rolled blunt in his pocket, decked out in his his go-to combination of a black Bowie shirt and doc martens. Booming eighties music seeped up the stairs and into Sander’s room as he wandered out onto his balcony. There was a strange feeling in the air. The lights from the mansion illuminated the surrounding forest and Sander breathed in the smell of fresh pine. Sander thought about Robbe from the cliffs, staring danger in the face. Robbe from the library, quiet and focused. Robbe from the bar, drunk and curious. And now Robbe, taking a small step into Sander’s world. Sander couldn’t help but wonder if this was the beginning of a very bad decision as he watched Robbe's friend pull up to the front of the residence with Robbe in the passenger seat. Robbe did a last check of himself in the car mirror and it might have been the most endearing thing Sander had ever seen.

And the pull persisted.

It continued as Sander's eyes followed Robbe walking into the mansion, greeted by Yasmina at the door. Sander wandered back into his bedroom, closing the balcony door behind him with the nagging worry sitting on his chest. Physically unable to head downstairs just yet, he sat on his bed for a moment and exhaled a deep breath. 

For reasons unbeknownst to him, death was back at the forefront of his mind. His brain only wanted to think about endings and the weight that they possess. How, when things end, possibility ends with it. There’s always possibility. Possibility when you step out the front door in the morning or make a decision to go right or left. But endings strip that away. Death strips that away.

The opposite of death is living. The opposite of death is choosing. Deciding to make a choice. To progress with something or put an end to it as soon as possible. With Robbe came danger. Robbe was more than just a choice. He felt like an inevitability, something ingrained in every version of Sander’s existence. 

So when Sander walked down the steps of the mansion again, and leaned against the kitchen archway where he could see Robbe standing by the island and talking to Yasmina and Zoe, he had to pause right there for a second.

He stared at the skin of Robbe’s nape where his curls were resting. Sander watched the way he fiddled with his fingers. Sander could almost see the rope laid out between them getting shorter and shorter.

Shorter as Sander made his presence known, announcing “Milan is asking for you,” and looking Yasmina’s way. Shorter as Sander placed a hand on the small of Robbe’s back and shuffled by to lean against the island.

Shorter as Robbe looked at him, every fine detail coming into focus for the first time since Sander had known him.

Shorter as Sander held out his hand, and Robbe took it. As Sander’s cool skin met Robbe’s warmth. As dark met light. As the sun met the moon.

Sander often wondered if there was one decision in every person’s existence that had greater weight than anything else. Certainly choosing to live was one of them, and that’s exactly what Sander felt he was doing. Choosing to breathe. To follow the path that the universe urged him toward.

He took one final breath, lips already twitching into a smile, and said-

“I’m Sander Driesen.”

**Author's Note:**

> hello!
> 
> okay so. as stated in the tags, this is a teaser!
> 
> a month ago i decided to write a vampire!sander au, but i didn’t want to write a chapter a week like i did with my last fic, bc something about this world seemed too special. i really wanted to live in it and take my time with it without the pressure of keeping people waiting and worrying that i wouldn’t get it done. 
> 
> so, i wrote basically the whole fic, and i’m finally ready to start uploading the chapters! the fic is called paint me in trust - inspired by the song human by dodie.
> 
> starting sunday (may 17th) i am going to post a chapter a week, each ranging from about 10-20k words. the chapters will always be posted on sundays at 1pm est. there are 6 chapters total with one epilogue.
> 
> the first two chapters of paint me in trust are in robbe’s pov, so i thought i would write a lil teaser in sander’s pov up until the moment he talks to robbe for the first time. 
> 
> so sunday: chapter one.
> 
> writing this has meant the absolute world to me and i hope that you are all able to be as immersed into the world as i have been this past month. this story never would have happened without emma, @lolahydri. i may have wrote it but the ideas she came up with you guys….. holy shit. she’s also been editing UP A STORM and i’m blown away by her talent. she is just as much my muse as robbe and sander are.
> 
> happy reading <3
> 
> tumblrs: 
> 
> writing blog: dearsander  
> main blog: dearrobbe
> 
> emma's tumblr: lolahydri


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